


Willing

by BlindSwandive, interstitial



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Deepthroating, Disability, Don't Try This At Home, Knight of Hell Dean Winchester, M/M, Major Character Death/Afterlife Fic, Post-Episode: s09e10 Road Trip, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Service Submission, Suicide, Undernegotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 15:23:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20530238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindSwandive/pseuds/BlindSwandive, https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstitial/pseuds/interstitial
Summary: After expelling Gadreel, Sam kills himself to close the Gates of Hell. Dean copes poorly alone, and then they cope poorly together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Canon divergent at 9x10: Road Trip. Contains potentially problematic/triggering elements related to post-traumatic disability. Feel free to contact me on my tumblr, @chiisana-sukima, for details if concerned. 
> 
> All my thanks to my amazing artist, BlindSwandive, whose work absolutely blows me away; and to my wonderful beta, Shealynn, whose writing never fails to be both smoking hot and emotionally true. Written for the 2019 SPN Dark Fic Bang, and also fills the sub!Dean square of my kink bingo card. 
> 
> This entire 13K monster was just an excuse to get Dean on his knees in front of King of Hell!Sam, so idek what happened there. :D

When Dean gets home, Sam is dead.

He finds Sam in the shower, lying curled on his side like he's fallen asleep on the hard bathroom tiles. Ruby's knife is coated rust red beside the fingers of his open hand. The shower isn't running, and Sam's fully dressed, with his princess hair all clotted with dried blood and the deep gash in his neck placed carefully over the drain. There are sigils Dean doesn't recognize on the backs of his hands, and one on his forehead, right between his closed eyes.

For a heartbeat or two, Dean's brain goes off-line, and Dean's just left there staring; no meaning attached to the tangle of red and plaid and blue-tinged skin. Then he goes for his gun, because something's in the bunker, and Sam— it's hurt Sam—

And then he notices how horribly peaceful Sam looks. There are no signs of struggle, no clues that anything happened Sam didn't want, or that he didn't do himself. Ruby's knife is Sam's knife, and has been for years, and it's so close to Sam's hand that the base of the hilt is touching the tip of his index finger.

The Mark on Dean's arm burns with frustration, whispers like a nightmare that Sam was its to kill. He barely notices. He drops to Sam's side and holds him close, rests Sam's lifeless head against his chest, arranges Sam's limp body in his lap like the world's most fucked up Pieta. The air is thick with the smell of rotting meat, and Sam's body is as floppy as a rag doll's, rigor mortis already come and gone. Forty-eight hours at least then Sam's been dead, while Dean was out dicking around, pretending not to care whether Sam would forgive him for Gadreel or not.

Dean's got his answer now.

From Dean's back pocket, his cell phone plays the hook from _Stairway to Heaven_. Plays it again, and again, and eventually it creeps into Dean's mind that Stairway is his ring tone for Cas. He ignores it for the meaningless distraction it is while he rocks Sam's body in his lap.

The phone shuts up for a while, but then it starts again. He ignores it some more, and when that doesn't work, he cards the clotted blood from Sam's hair while he imagines throwing it against the wall and watching it shatter into tiny, silent pieces.

The Mark throbs on his arm like a second heartbeat; _breakitbreakitbreakitbreakitbreak_. He was out being 'worthy' for the Mark, playing footsies with Cain, while Sam was standing under the showerhead with a knife for killing demons against his neck. Dean hates the Mark so suddenly and completely he would excise it from his arm with his teeth if he could. He can't though, it's his now, grafted to his soul, so he picks up the phone instead.

"Dean, is Sam there?" Cas asks.

A choked moan escapes Dean's mouth.

"Dean?" Cas asks, "Dean, are you alright?"

There's dried blood on Sam's cheek. Dean licks his finger and smudges it away.

"Dean?"

Sam's skin is so pale. The gash in his neck looks like a cheap steak left out in the sun; black and rank, with glimmers of white where the trachea shows. There are no hesitation wounds. Sam put his mind to his task, and just....

"Dean? I'm an hour from the bunker. Don't do anything stupid."

* * *

An hour must pass because Cas shows up. His dumb accountant trench coat is wrinkled and his hair is in disarray. Dean is still sitting cross-legged on the floor of the shower room with Sam's body in his arms. Dean's legs have fallen asleep.

"Angel radio reports the Gates of Hell are sealed," Cas tells him.

"How long have you been sitting here?" Cas asks him.

"We should burn Sam's body," Cas says to him.

Dean bares his teeth and snarls.

"His soul has departed, Dean." Cas' voice is soft, as if there's anything gentleness can accomplish now. "And even if I could retrieve it, the grace I stole is insufficient to heal his body. I'm very sorry."

Dean struggles to his feet, hoists Sam into a bridal carry. Cas opens the door for him, and he brings Sam outside and lays him down in the frozen meadow out behind the bunker. No way is Sam gonna burn. Absolutely no way.

They pile up some brush and set it on fire instead. The wood hisses and pops as the ice melts off it, but it softens the topsoil enough so Dean can dig. Dean digs until his shovel skips off frozen earth, they throw more brush in the hole, and repeat until it's deep enough to put Sam in the ground.

"He may not be in Hell," Cas offers, while Dean shovels dirt onto his brother.

Heaven's closed for business, so Sam’s sure as shit not there.

He could be sticking around to haunt Dean, maybe. Dean would deserve it, and pathetic as it is, he'd be grateful for it too. He knows though, deep in his chest where everything’s choked and broken and the air feels too thick to breathe, that Sam isn't a ghost. He's a martyr, in the original sense of the word. He died for his beliefs and because some stupid asshole pissed him off.

"It's not your fault," Cas lies.

Or maybe he's not lying. He might believe it. Cas has always been decent—and naive—like that.

* * *

Once Sam's been taken care of, Dean buries himself alive in books.

It's practical at first. Sam's in Hell, and Dean hasn't got the slightest clue how to get him out. He makes a list in his head and goes down it methodically, even though everything on it is a long shot.

He drives to a crossroads with the requisite box of cat bones and mementos first, but no one comes to make a deal. It's no surprise; the third Trial was supposed to drag all the demons back to Hell before the Gates slammed shut and locked them in. He shouldn't have hoped. The sky above the empty dirt intersection presses down on him like earth on a coffin, and he's shaking by the time he parks Baby back inside the Bunker's garage.

He strolls remotely through the darkweb, but the Colt's good and lost, so there's no prying a Gate open that way. And maybe there's clues on the demon tablet, but now that Kevin is—

God, Kevin.

And the look on Sam's face when he realized. Blood was still dripping from the bore holes in his skull and they’d barely unstrapped him from the chair before he started thinking too goddamn much. It makes Dean's stomach hurt. He doesn't get it. He feels like he got played by Sam, and how can that be? All the guilt and moral compromise it took to save his brother, and now Sam's worm food anyhow. It's wrong—_Dean's_ wrong—to be so angry, when there's plenty of responsibility for Sam's death to go around. But it keeps sneaking up on him like an unquiet spirit and burying its claws in his chest.

It’s unfair, is what it is. Even ashamed or grief-stricken or burning with rage, Sam still always—in any circumstances whatsoever—had a plan. But without Sam, Dean has nothing.

* * *

As Dean's leads peter out, his research ventures further afield. He wears out the library shelves and starts working his way through the archives. There's a treatise on possession in the storeroom that fronts the dungeon. He rejects it twenty times at least before he finally gives in and reads it cover to cover in bed. When he's done, he lays it on his bedside table, crawls off his mattress—none too steadily, because he's pretty drunk—and throws up in the sink.

Crowley, of course, never shows with the First Blade. He's a demon after all; even if he’s at the top of the infernal jenga pile Sam kicked over. The Mark whispers at Dean, soft and indistinct like highway noise—_needitneeditneeditneeditneed_—and doesn't pipe down when Dean explains to its ghostly presence in his head that he's already trying as goddamn hard as he can to go where Crowley is.

He ignores the Mark until he can't anymore, and then he cuts it off his arm with Ruby's knife. It burns and shrieks and fights for control of his knife hand every inch of the way, and when it's gone and he's digging with the tip of the blade at the muscle underneath, the urge to go hunt Crowley down in some vague, unknown place where he can't even be isn’t an iota weaker.

The Mark starts healing itself before Dean even puts the knife down, but only gets around to the surrounding fascia once Dean’s dizzy and faint from blood loss and it’s clear he can't be bothered to dress the wound. Cas finds him in the shower room, in the same spot he found him last time.

"Sam wouldn’t want to see you this way," Cas says.

_What way?_ Dean almost answers,_ What part of this didn't he plan?_ But it’s not worth the effort of speech, so he leaves it alone.

Cas starts putting Dean to bed at night and making him three squares during the day, because otherwise Dean forgets. He brings the meals to the library while Dean studies, artlessly plated and accompanied by El Sol. Dean eats what he's given. It all tastes like graveyard dirt, but he can't save Sam on an empty stomach. The beer he drinks with more gusto, and goes back for seconds and thirds, and then JD.

"I want to help you," Cas says. Which is fine, except he can't bring Sam back, so how much help can he be?

Six weeks in, Cas gets to, “Perhaps you should consider a therapist, Dean.”

_'FUCK OFF CAS'_, Dean scrawls on a torn off page of the compendium of demonology he’s currently failing to make heads or tails of. '_GO DEAL W YUR PROBLMS LEAVE ME TO MINE'._

Cas fucks off to deal with Metatron, and Dean is finally free to try his last resort.

* * *

Dean is drinking tequila at the Last Call Tavern in Tioga, Delaware. It's not much of an establishment. It's ugly and old, with a single battered pool table and a water-damaged bar, and Dean fits right in. He hasn't put any special effort into disguising himself as a down-on-his-luck, friendless piece of monster-bait. He's plenty convincing as is, these days.

He sits on his bar stool and waits for moonrise. The house tequila's nasty but effective, and now that he's doing something concrete to get Sam back, he can almost enjoy the way it burns his throat and whittles at the too sharp edges of the world of the living.

Eventually his mark—small ‘m’—walks in. The guy's more physically imposing than he looked on the CCTV footage from last month in Camden. He's almost as tall as Sam, with the build of a pit bull under his biker jacket and the swagger of someone who fights dirty. He's careless when he cases the crowd though; the victim pool is tiny this early in the evening, and the hunger in his cold slice of a smile is too obvious to miss. He should've waited, hoarded it to his chest, like Dean's done, until the moment was right. As monsters go, he's an amateur.

He eyes up a bottle blonde in the back by the pool table who is pointedly ignoring the guy she's with, but tonight's choices are Dean or no one. Dean lets his shot glass slip between his fingers, so it bounces off the bar top and rolls between his feet on the scuffed, sticky floor. It's not as loud a drop as he wanted, and the glass doesn't break, but tequila spills on the bar and the thighs of his jeans, and it's apparently enough, because Amateur Hour's attention snaps away from the girl and his lips curl up off his teeth like a wolf's. Dean grins weakly and smears at the puddle of alcohol he made on the bar with a paper napkin.

"Go home," the bartender says wearily, and takes over with a rag.

Dean's Mark—big ‘m’—sings on his arm. He makes a show of trouble getting the right number of bills out of his wallet and onto the bar, stumbles getting off his barstool, and weaves his way out the door and into the parking lot, twirling Baby's key ring around his finger. In his periphery, Amateur Hour follows.

"Hey buddy, you don't look so good," Amateur says. His work boots crunch through the gravel of the unpaved lot, gain on Dean until he's right up behind him, uncomfortably close. His hand claps down on Dean's shoulder, and Dean has to force himself not to drive an elbow back into his belly.

"You shouldn't be driving, man. You'll wrap yourself around a tree." Amateur's voice deepens unnaturally as he speaks.

_Killhimkillhimkillhim_ the Mark whispers. Dean grits his teeth. He has an agenda. The Mark can put up or shut up.

"There's an all-night diner a block from here." Amateur wraps an arm too tightly around Dean's shoulders; stronger than a human's and forgetting to conceal it. "C'mon; let’s get some coffee in you."

Dean pastes a woozy smile on his face and follows along under the bone-grinding guidance of Amateur's grip until they're down an alley and behind a dumpster, and Dean's back is against a cold brick wall. Amateur's grin in the moonlight is filled with yellow fangs. His hand against Dean's chest is tipped by growing claws.

Dean's gotten rusty at fear since Sam died and left him with no one to be afraid for anymore, but he flattens his back against the wall and gamely pretends to cower. He throws his arm—the one with the Mark—up in front of his face and hopes it doesn't look too obviously like an offering.

There's a flash of movement, too fast to follow, and pain explodes through his forearm exactly where the Mark is branded into his flesh. Fangs tear through his tissue, and the sharp snap of breaking bones fills his ears.

_Nownownownownow_ the Mark urges.

Dean reaches his free hand behind his back, pulls his 1911, and fires. Amateur stumbles back.

If anything, Dean's arm hurts worse once the compression on his bitten-through nerves is gone. The pain is excruciating; fire running up his arm and into his chest. He slides down the wall and sits with his ass in a pile of litter and his mangled forearm cradled protectively against his chest, while Amateur's body pumps the last of its lifeblood out onto the ground.

Under Dean's skin, the Mark's power buzzes and stings like hornets, barely discernible in his arm against the fire of the wound, but stronger in his bloodstream, in his heart and head and behind his teeth and in his hands. He rests there in the dark, breathing through it. Not long now. One way or another, it won't be long now at all.

His stomach growls. He's suddenly hungry, and then he's hungrier than he's ever been in his life. He craves meat so bad he can almost taste it, and he only wants to eat what he can kill himself. He licks across his teeth, and they prick at his tongue like a row of needles.

His right arm's still too injured to shoot with, and his left hand's slippery from where he bled all over it, and he drops the 1911 a couple times before he gets his fingers wrapped tight around the grip and the muzzle pointed at his chest. The angle's awkward too, and his damn hand is trembling—not because he's afraid, but because the Mark hasn't healed the bones in his other arm yet and he's still bleeding and now he's getting shocky and it really fucking _hurts_—and in the end he has to wedge the business end into the dip between two ribs to make sure he'll get the shot right.

He takes a deep breath.

Man, if Dad could only see him now; becoming a monster on purpose. But then, Dad did always say Sammy comes first, so there it friggin' is.

He tightens his finger on the trigger and puts a silver bullet in his heart.


	2. Chapter 2

When Dean opens his eyes to Purgatory's washed out, endless forest, his unnatural hunger is gone. His back is sore from sleeping on the ground, and the shoulder he's dislocated on a few too many hunts aches like it always does when it's overcast and drizzling. He’s still holding the gun he shot himself with, but his chest wound is gone, and the werewolf bite on his arm is missing too. That's a couple Hail Mary wins in his terrible playbook already: he made it into Hell's back yard, and he's well enough to look for the hidden portal Sam went through during the second Trial.

He drags himself stiffly to his feet. There's a river not far from where he landed, so that's as good a place to start as any. He walks along beside it, right out in the open, because why not?

Part of his lack of caution is just that he’s in a hurry. Sam's in trouble and Hell years go fast. But when he’s hiked for several miles and not encountered a single monster and he rolls up his sleeves to get some air on his overheated skin, the Mark glows eerily orange against the monochrome landscape, and he has to admit he also just kinda hopes something finds him.

He misses Sam.

And he gets that the Mark isn't a true possessor—not the way Gadreel was, anyhow—but he's sick of it rifling through his thoughts and feelings, latching onto some and abandoning others like Dean is a frayed pair of jeans it's gonna patch to its own design. It's creepy and invasive, and okay, it's true: Dean wants desperately to see his brother. But he’s also coming to understand—in a way he thought he did before, but sure as shit was wrong—that his brother has every reason not to feel the same way he does.

The Mark steers him like a GPS. He’s warm and pleasantly buzzed inside when he hikes the way it wants and a cold, aching pit of nothing when he goes anywhere else. He tries not to think about it. So what if the Mark wants him in Hell. It’s not a disaster. He wants to go there too.

He ducks between the triangle of trees Sam described way back in the backwoods of Maine, when they were only just beginning to feel the first tiny edges of the disaster the Trials would later become. He drags the rocks covering the portal aside until the driving pull of a rip in reality ruffles through his hair and pulls at his clothes. Its blurry and flickering and so over-bright on the other side he can't see a thing, and it fills his belly with dread.

Hell is through there.

Sam, too.

A step and he’s through.

* * *

When Dean was in Hell the first time, he never left the confines of Alastair’s dungeon. _When you’re ready,_ Alastair would say, but somehow Dean never was.

He’s heard though. He's been told by various demons over the years, and some by Cas, and a little by Sam. And there’s no way in—well, just no way. No corner of Hell has ever looked like this.

The Mark hums reassuringly.

_Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes._

Under Dean’s boots is dry, brown grass. Beside him are fields and fields of golden wheat. They stretch to the distant horizon, rippling gently in an unmistakable summer breeze. The sky above is dense with thunderheads, but blue as sapphire in the cracks between the clouds. It’s hot, but it’s hot like the dog days of an August heatwave.

It can’t be Hell.

_Isisisisisis_ insists the Mark.

Dean sets out walking.

* * *

He walks through the wheat fields and down back country roads for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon before he finds a group of demons to give himself up to.

There are three of them in meatsuits—or just looking like the bodies they had before they died—harassing a pathetic, disincorporated soul way out in the middle of a tobacco field. The soul weaves and twists between their legs, too far gone to hold the shape of whatever it thought of itself in life. Dean abandons his pretense that maybe the Mark is wrong about where they are. He strolls through the rows of rich green leaves with his hands raised in surrender. The demons ignore him in favor of kicking at the soul as it clings to them like fog, and he has to smack one on the arm to get its attention.

"Can't you see we're busy here," it growls. It's meatsuit—or body or whatever—looks vaguely like Walter White, only scrawnier.

Dean's tired from walking. He's hot and thirsty, and there's a water truck a few rows over, but it's lying broken open on its side, tank long since emptied into the parched earth. He hasn't gotten any less mad at Sam or at himself in the past seven weeks, and now that he's in Hell and it's... it's a fucking road trip through _Kansas_... now there's a twisted, ugly knot deep in his stomach. Maybe hitting something will ease it up. And if it won't, well, maybe getting hit back will.

He’s still got Ruby’s knife in his belt, but he ignores it and throws a punch instead.

The demons jump him like a gang. Three on one—no, four on one; even their former victim joins in, slithering across his face and choking him with smoke—but Dean doesn’t care. The shock of impact when his fists connect with muscle and the harder ones when they land on bone is comforting and familiar. Even the return shots feel almost good.

All that stuff he told Sam about the realness of physical pain compared to pain of the spirit? It wasn’t exactly bullshit, not really. But even if it’s all pretend in Hell, a simulacra manufactured to account for things human souls weren’t meant to understand, maybe the illusion is so close it doesn’t matter. Maybe there’s not quite as big a difference as he made out.

They drop him fast, land him on the ground on his belly, too many to hold off for long. They kick him a couple more times for good measure, a kidney shot and one to the ribs, and a few more that don't land as solidly. His jaw hurts, and unless the stupid Mark decides to grace him with its inconstant healing, he's gonna be black and blue up one side of his body and right back down the other.

One of the demons hisses from above his head, "_Oh fuck, fuck, I think this guy's Dean Winchester_," and that's the end of the open air bar brawl.

They haul Dean upright and Walter White Lookalike Demon tromps off into the tobacco barn and comes back out with a length of ratty, old rope. They tie Dean’s hands behind his back and shake him and ask him who he is. They smack him around a little more and he should probably just tell them yeah, he's Dean Winchester, but it isn't worth the bother.

They fight amongst themselves for a while, and then they kick Dean in the shin to get him moving. They lead him down a cracked, empty back road, past a battered sign that says WELCOME TO LATHAM, KS.

He wishes they'd talk about Sam.

He almost asks.

But he doesn't.

It niggles at him that he doesn't, an itch he can't scratch in some part of his brain he doesn't want to feel.

He _could_ ask, right?

Not like they'd necessarily answer or anything, they're demons after all, but like... he's capable of asking? If he wanted to?

He hasn't had much to say since Sam died; that part he's well aware of. But surely he's said something. He goes back over the intervening weeks in his head, but the whole period's blurry and catastrophic, and he can't remember.

When he was a kid—after Mom died—they’d meet people on the road or Dad’d leave Dean and baby Sammy with a sitter, and Dad would always say _‘Dean’s just grieving, he’ll talk when he’s ready’_; and it’d been true. But maybe Dad was reassuring Dean as much as he was reassuring the adults that seesawed into and out of their lives, because Dean had always felt like his silence was a choice.

Maybe it wasn’t.

The demons walk him along, and the pretend sun slides down the illusory sky while Dean doesn't ask after his dead brother's health. Evening comes on, and it's muggy and stifling, and when they get to a motel, black flies buzz around the lights of the no vacancy sign. There's a parking lot full of beaters, and an in-ground pool with a few battered lounge chairs around it and leaf rot scumming up the surface of the water. It reminds Dean so much of this one long-stay hotel they lived in for a couple months when Sam was fifteen, that he knows as soon as he sees it—they’ve arrived.

One of Dean's captors waits with him on the far side of the lot by an old Plymouth Duster with a crumpled right quarter panel, while the other two go off to report to a clump of demons clustered around the lobby door. The new batch are dressed like military of some sort—fatigues and body armor and assault rifles and all—but they act more like office workers on a smoke break. One disappears inside and everybody stands around and gossips, and eventually he comes back out and everybody stands around and gossips some more. Dean shakes out his shoulders and wishes they'd untie his hands, but of course, they don't.

A woman appears from the lobby a few minutes later, wearing a tailored business suit that somehow manages to be both professional and also accentuate the fact that she’s built like a brickhouse in a five alarm fire. She walks over to Dean with the whole pile of demons following after, and it turns out when she’s up close and personal that she’s none other than Bela fucking Talbot.

She rolls her eyes at Dean like he’s an idiot—which to be fair, he clearly is—but otherwise gives no sign she recognizes him.

“Well, take him in then,” she says, and the demons form a phalanx around Dean and lead him in.

* * *

They march Dean down a nondescript motel hall that looks exactly like every other motel hall he's ever been in, to an unmarked door and two more guards. They jostle Dean through the door, and everybody goes in with him.

Dean doubts he'd remember what the long-stay in Latham looked like on the inside; it was a long time ago and he didn't really give a flying fuck, spent most of the summer sneaking into one girl's house or another, and what little time was left over swimming in the disused outdoor pool. But Sam would remember; definitely. It was the longest they stuck around in any one place through all of Sam's school years, and when they left two weeks into September, he had a snit that lasted ‘til Thanksgiving.

Whatever it looked like, this isn't it. It's not a long-stay at all. It's just a vague amalgam of all the generic doubles Sam and Dean have spent most of their adult life moving between like migratory birds. There's a green bedspread on one bed and an orange one on the other; a cheap print of an airplane on one wall, but a dolphin on the wall across from it. Maps and notes are taped up there too, like Dad used to do during complicated cases. The room is kinda small for all the demons it took to bring a completely willing Dean in, but every one of 'em squeezes in there anyhow. They manage a semi-coordinated salute-y thing, fall back, and then Dean is front and center.

Facing his brother.

"Dean," Sam says. He pinches the bridge of his nose and huffs out an annoyed sigh, like Dean's a complication now. Which, frankly, he probably is.

Sam gets up from the cheap particle-board table he's been sitting at, but he doesn't come around it, doesn't offer the hug they seldom share except at deaths and revivals. He knocks his knuckles awkwardly against the tabletop, fidgets with the keyboard of the laptop he's been working at. It looks exactly like the last one he had when he was alive, right down to the scratch on the back of the case where Dean accidentally knocked it off his bed one night when he borrowed it to watch internet porn.

Sam doesn't say _‘Sorry I filleted myself like a cheap cut of meat and didn't even leave a note’._

He looks—

Well, he looks like Sam. Exactly like Sam.

Except maybe sadder.

Dean's throat has a lump in it. It aches when he tries to swallow.

He waits to be angry.

Okay, sure, maybe it doesn’t make him a great person, but he's been mad at Sam more or less nonstop since the day he found Sam's body. He goes to bed pissed, has nightmares washed in red and torture, wakes up brittle and short-tempered, and never shakes it. Pretty much the only time he's not mad at Sam is when he's too mad at himself to notice how he feels about anyone else. And today's not a primo day for turning over a mellow new leaf. So surely he must be angry. He has to be.

But he just feels... nothing.

He's still hungry, because the demons never fed him. His hands are numb because they never untied him. He's got various aches and pains, 'cause that's what happens when you get the shit kicked out of you. And he thinks he might be sad because Sam is sad, which he'd just as soon ignore.

But that's about it.

"Which Gate did you come through?" Sam asks. No_ 'I'm happy to see you, Dean'_. No_ 'How have you been holding up'?_

It’s rude, is what it is. But Dean means to answer anyhow. Someone's gotta take the first step forward and he does get that the initial offense was his.

It's just, he’s all full of static on the inside, and when he reaches for the words, he feels dizzy and the room around him recedes into unreality, and nothing happens at all.

"Dean?" There's the note of concern, finally, the one that would've been in Sam’s voice right from the beginning before—well, before all this.

The traitorous Mark purrs benignly like a sleeping cat. It hated Sam back when it fused itself onto Dean's arm and into his soul, burned like hot coals whenever Dean thought of his brother. But that was when Sam was alive and Dean had stupidly cursed himself to fratricide.

Now Sam is dead, and Dean is—

Dean is—

One of the demons shoves him from behind.

"Answer your King," it snarls.

"That's enough," Sam returns sharply.

Your King.

_OurKingourKingourKing_, the Mark murmurs contentedly.

It wouldn't be unfair to say Dean's entire existence, since the night he ran out of Sam's nursery with his baby brother in his arms, has been molded and manipulated—and in the end given over more or less freely—to preventing Sam from sitting at this exact table, in this exact cheap motel, in this exact facsimile of Kansas.

And yet here they are. And Sam did it on purpose.

What does Dean have to offer in the face of that?

He lowers his eyes from the unchanged features of his brother, the King of Hell, and drops to his knees on the carpet.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam is silent while Dean stares a hole in the floor. No one moves. Dean's pulse thunders like the ocean in his ears, and Sam's entire demon Royal Guard or whatever is so eerily quiet Dean thinks maybe if Sam was alive, he'd hear Sam's heartbeat too, a second riptide crashing out of time with his own.

"Ha ha, Dean, very funny," Sam says eventually. He doesn't sound amused.

"The rest of you all go. Bela, have the soldiers at the Gates report in. None of this happened. Understood?"

The demons mill around a little.

"It's fine. He won't hurt me."

There are a few more equivocating noises, and then the quiet scrape of the door edge against the carpet and the muffled clatter of a whole phalanx of demons taking their leave. Dean is still staring at the carpet. It's one of those awful hotel ones where they make it fifteen different ugly colors, so the stains won't show when someone pukes on it.

Sam walks around behind Dean, squats down, and unties Dean's wrists. Sensation floods back into Dean's fingers, a light socket rush of pins and needles.

"Get up; you're creeping me out," Sam says. He claps Dean on the back companionably enough, but he sounds resigned and unhappy when he adds, "I should've known it was only a matter of time."

The carpet's thin, and the hard floor underneath it hurts Dean's legs all up and down the shins where his weight squashes them against the floorboards.

But it also feels...

Solid. Easier than getting up.

Or no, maybe what it feels like really—deep down, when he lets himself sink into it—is relief. Dean did what he could, and it wasn't enough, and he's done.

He’s done trying. He’s done with everything being his fault. He kind of wants to stay there forever, in peace on his knees, responsible for nothing.

But life doesn't work that way, and just 'cause he's dead doesn't mean it's about to do a 180. 

He shakes the numbness out of his hands and pushes to his feet. He stands there in the middle of the room like an idiot, unsure what to do with the awkwardness now that he can't fill it up with wisecracks. The absence where his anger at Sam should be is disconcerting. He wants to fill it—in some impossible, desperate way—with Sam himself. He wants to rush over and crush Sam against his chest, feel the hard press of Sam's muscle against his own, pretend it's still his living body.

"Are you hurt?" Sam asks.

Dean shrugs and shakes his head.

"I'm guessing this isn't the silent treatment."

Dean rolls his eyes. Like he could ever shut up this long on purpose.

"Can you write?"

Dean wrote that note to Cas. But it wasn't exactly an opus, and there were errors in it. He shrugs again.

Sam gets a pen and the notepad off the table from beside his laptop, and hands them to Dean. _Sleep EZ Motor Lodge and Conference Center_ is printed across the top of the pad in cheerful yellow letters. Dean kind of wants to set it on fire.

"What happened?"

Dean walks over to one of the beds and sits down gingerly on the threadbare bedspread. He scrawls his answer, but the note comes out a chicken scratch he doesn't recognize as his own, and when he's done, the message reads ‘_NTHN HP NDSAD_’. He crumples it up in frustration and lobs it at the floor.

He writes the second attempt with exaggerated deliberation, pictures each letter individually in his head. They come out blocky and awkward, like a five year old's:

_'MY BRTOHER KILLED HMSEFL'._

Close enough.

He tears the paper off the pad and holds it out. The edges of Sam's mouth inch downward. He stares at the paper, eyes unfocused.

He pushes his hair off his forehead, turns his back on Dean without saying a word. His hand might shake when he drops Dean's note beside the laptop, or it might not too, and Dean's just imagining it, wishing Sam still cared enough to be that affected.

Sam goes over to the mini-fridge, and he stands there all hunched over with his back to Dean and the fridge door open for too long. He sighs when he straightens up, and he's holding two El Sols by the necks when he turns around. There's a sad little crinkle between his eyebrows. He comes over between the beds and hands Dean a beer.

"Hungry?" he asks.

Dean shakes his head. He’s been starving all day, but now he just feels nauseous. He accepts his beer gracelessly. He can't make a joke, and he can't say thanks, and he doesn't feel all that thankful anyway. He takes a long pull.

"Help yourself to whatever's in the fridge if you want something later," Sam says, neutral and flat. "You can have the bed you're sitting on; no one uses it. My subconscious thinks all hotel rooms are doubles, I guess, so I'm stuck with it.

"The bathroom's on the left. The door on the right goes to the Cage. Don't open it. The cable's pretty good here; might as well make yourself at home 'til I figure out how to get you back topside."

Sam turns away. Already. So quick to go do whatever the King of Hell needs to do now, fight a war or mediate land disputes or whatever. Dean springs up from his perch on the bed, grabs Sam's shoulder. Sam can't be expecting it, because Dean spins him easily and holds him by both biceps, so they're close, so Sam can't ignore him. He shakes his head with exaggerated vigor.

Sam lets himself be held. He's watching Dean's face, his eyes. Dean points at himself, then at Sam. He pokes Sam's chest, and then his own again, repeats the gesture a couple times, and only then gestures up at the ceiling.

"No," Sam says simply. "I'm not going with you."

* * *

Dean's been in Sam's new version of Hell ten days.

"You missed one," Bela observes from her lounge chair on the cracked cement pool deck. She's traded in her executive secretary look for a black bikini, a sheer gold version of the skirt thing chicks tie around their waists at the beach, and gold sandals. Her makeup is perfect even though it's ninety out easy and humid as the devil's ass. She points at the deep end of the pool, where an upside down junebug is frantically waving its tiny legs in the air.

Dean—the Righteous Man, True Vessel of Michael, and ex-protegee of the most feared torturer Hell has ever known—scoops up the junebug with a leaf skimmer and throws it over the motel fence.

"How the mighty have fallen." Bela taps a manicured finger against her empty Margarita glass. "Fetch me another drink?"

Dean flips her off.

Bela raises an eyebrow and shrugs. "It never hurts to ask."

She returns her glass to the flaking white cabana table and starts filing her nails. Dean pulls the filter out of the pool and hoses it down. It’s clogged with a month’s worth of leaves and dead bugs, bare minimum. If Dean didn’t clean it, would it stay exactly like this forever? Or when Sam took over Hell, did it start out clean and then accumulate crap at a real pool’s rate?

Dean almost wants to leave it and see what happens, but he's too bored to let any task available go undone. Today alone he's already tidied up his and Sam's room, washed and dried Sam's clothes in the coin op laundry, and filled the remaining space in the mini-fridge with cokes from the soda machine. It's all busywork, and Sam didn’t ask him to do any of it; Dean just freaks out when he's idle too long and doesn't have a purpose.

In the whole time he's been here, Sam's never asked him for anything except to go back topside. He's been unfailingly but distantly solicitous, like Dean's a visitor who's overstayed his welcome but will be returning from whence he came any day now. _'Would you like Chinese tonight, Dean?' 'I'm sorry, but the front parking lot is off-limits, Dean.' 'This is Mandy, your speech pathologist, Dean.'_ It makes Dean want to scream. But of course, he can't, so that's awesome.

"Not that the day laborer look doesn't become you—” Bela quirks her mouth up in a half-smile and stares pointedly at Dean's chest, where his t-shirt is soaked with sweat and stuck to his pecs. "—but aren't you working a bit below your pay grade?"

There are only so many ways to flip someone off, so Dean ignores her.

The pool is an exact replica of the one at the original Sleep EZ Motor Lodge and Conference Center. Dean used to clean that one too, summer days when he wasn't working a case with Dad or out getting laid, bare chested and nineteen, working on his tan while Sam sat at the deck table in shorts and a tee shirt and read his way through the science fiction section of the Latham Public Library. Sam had his growth spurt that summer; turned lean and lanky as a thoroughbred colt. His skin was copper dark, while Dean's only burned, and his hair was lighter then, shot through with strands of golden-brown from the sun.

"I hear when you were Alastair’s cabana boy, you had more impressive talents on offer than maid service."

Dean looks up from vacuuming the pool bottom and Bela cocks an eyebrow and pokes an index finger through the circle of her opposite finger and thumb. She's been baiting him all afternoon, taking advantage of his inability to answer back.

The Mark, which has been disgustingly agreeable since Dean's moment of crazy on Sam's carpet, gently floats the idea that killing her would shut her up.

Dean's still got Ruby's knife on him and he’s less opposed than he could be. Her teasing's mostly harmless, but she could zip it any time now and it wouldn't be too soon. Dean wasn't exactly sucking Alastair's dick for funsies last trip downstairs, and Bela knows it. She's been through Hell's ringer too.

Sam would probably think offing her's excessive though.

"Not me, you idiot." Bela raises her hands in mock surrender. "I know my place in the food chain. I meant your brother."

Like that's better.

Dean turns his back on her. There’s still tons of algae on the liner. He’ll have to go over the whole thing with a manual brush. His shoulders are tight and his neck is starting to ache. Maybe after he's done he'll take a break, see what Sam's subconscious thinks is on Pay Per View.

"Don't play it off like you're so offended. Word gets around."

Dean's not offended... exactly. Hell cured him of any illusions about his moral decency long ago. But she's being disrespectful of Sam. Sam's not that kind of person. And even if he was, he wouldn't go near Dean now with a hundred foot telescoping pool pole.

"Sam's been here fifteen years and hasn't taken a lover," Bela says to his back. Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. "He's a good King, Dean. And he's unhappy."


	4. Chapter 4

So Sam's sad. Whatever. It's not like Dean wants him to enjoy it here.

~


	5. Chapter 5

They're a month into their stand-off when Dean breaks.

He's sitting on a metal folding chair at the back of the Pearl S. Malmut Grand Ballroom—which is grand only in that it’s large, and in no other way whatsoever. He's slouched down, wearing a _don't talk to me_ scowl and a Kansas City Royals cap he stole from the registration guy in the lobby. He's not supposed to be here. Sam holds his public audiences in the ballroom, sitting in an armchair appropriated from the lobby, on a stage raised slightly above the floor, and Sam's given strict orders that Dean is not to be seen in public.

Dean's been distracting himself from the tedium with cleaning and repairing crap, and watching daytime TV, and doing the therapy exercises Mandy the Speech Pathologist from Literal Hell gave him, and worrying Bela's insane advice around in his head. But boredom is impossible to resist forever, and it turns out Sam's security is for shit. So here Dean is.

The day's been a raging disappointment thus far. Dean has sciatica in his ass cheeks from the metal chair and Sam apparently rules Hell like a kindly professor at an overpriced liberal arts college in New England. He's attentive and polite, and uses his Empathetic Fed face on each and every petitioner, even when their problems are so simple Dean could rule on them himself.

He's just finishing up with a dispute over an esoteric land rights issue when the ballroom doors clank open and two soldiers enter, flanking a woman in handcuffs. Bela looks up from the notes she's taking at the desk to Sam's left and scowls. Sam's ever-present guards snap to attention. Even the audience filling the packed rows of folding chairs hush.

The soldiers push their prisoner forward. She's bruised up pretty badly and has obviously seen the unpleasant side of an interrogation room. Even beat to shit, she's seductively gorgeous, and she's wearing a little black dress that doesn’t cover much of anything. If she isn't a crossroads demon, Dean'll eat his stupid baseball cap disguise.

"Caught her rabble-rousing up near the Wyoming Gate, Chief," one of the soldiers restraining her says.

"What's your name?" Sam asks from his armchair throne. His sympathy face is tucked back away wherever he keeps it, but he hasn't replaced it with anything new.

The prisoner ignores his question.

"Enjoy your rule while it lasts, little King," she spits. "I hear the Gates are unstable and your brother came through with the Mark of Cain."

The audience murmurs. Dean scrunches farther down in his seat. Sam uncoils from his cut-rate throne, and comes down off his risers to tower over the prisoner. She looks like a doll beside him, the difference in size so stark it seems he could crush her between his hands.

She laughs in his face anyway. "He'll make a splendid royal consort for Abaddon, don't you think?"

"I think the Gates are closed," Sam says flatly, "And you won't live to see them open. Tell me the source of your lies."

His eyes—Sam's beautiful multicolor sunflower eyes—glow yellow, so bright Dean can see them from the back of the room. The prisoner gives up her source without complaint.

Dean's heart rate skyrockets. Why did he come here? He could be dusting the lame-ass, mismatched wall art, but no, he had to come watch a shitshow he's now absolutely positive he doesn't want to see.

There must be five hundred people in the ballroom, easy, and Sam interrogates the prisoner right there in front of them all. She's completely compliant; gives him everything he asks as soon as he asks it, as easy as Dean gave up Baby's keys to that stoner kid with the awesome van and the mind control powers. He's calm and methodical throughout, and his eyes look like Azazel's.

When he's gotten what he wants from her, he flicks them closed and open again, and she sparks inside and drops to the floor. Dean wants to fucking cry.

Sam goes back to his throne, and Bela calls the next petitioner's name. The soldiers drag the prisoner's corpse away while Sam hears an argument about price gouging between a demon in a portly meatsuit and one wearing a prepubescent girl.

Dean holds his hands between his thighs so they won't shake. How could he be so complacent? He let himself get sucked in by the backdrop, and pretended if Sam was in charge then the motel must be just a motel and the blue skies and wheat fields must be almost benign. He should’ve made Sam leave, knocked him out and dragged him through Purgatory unconscious, if that’s what it took.

This isn't Kansas.

It's Hell, and it has Dean's brother.

* * *

Petitioners come and go, and Dean sneaks out the back. He stalks through the lobby, past the row of fake plants and the bright, unworn square on the carpet where Sam stole the chair for his throne. Dean's fists hurt from how tightly they're clenched. His stomach is twisted in knots.

Sam and his stupid, self-destructive martyr complex; he never fucking learns. He agreed—he _agreed_, goddammit; over his nearly dead body in that church where he was curing Crowley—that closing the Gates wasn't worth it. That he wouldn't leave Dean all alone.

And now look at what his passive-aggressive ass is up to. The Gates are closed. Mission-he-said-he'd-abandoned Accomplished. The demons are all locked in and he could go upstairs through the portal any time he wants. But he'd rather stay here, in a cheap illusion he created to micromanage Hell, than come back home to his brother.

So his eyes are yellow. Big deal. Doesn't mean it's permanent. Dean'll find a way to fix it. He always does. He'll just—

Just—

The static builds in Dean's head, roars in his ears until it's jet engine loud; a 747 hurtling down a runway into the treacherous arms of the air. He gets to Sam's door and yanks it open, but inside, the space is too familiar. Sam's war maps are all over the walls, and it's hard to breathe, and it looks exactly like their horrible, fucked up mess of a life has always looked, and it's all so fucking awful Dean can't stand it.

He sits down at the edge of the bed Sam told him was his and scrubs his hand across his face.

It was wrong—what he and Gadreel did to Sam. He knew it even at the time. Sam has every right to be pissed.

But this is too much.

What was he supposed to do? Sam was _dying_.

And now Dean's crippled himself and he can't even fix what he broke.

* * *

The door swings open, and it's Sam. He says hello, gets himself a beer, sits down at the table, and opens up his laptop. He makes no reference to the events of the day. He checks his email, or googles how to improve your demonic mind-killing skills, or whatever other crap he does when Dean isn't important enough to notice.

Dean's so angry he's practically vibrating. His back is an aching plywood board waiting to be snapped. He wants to say something sarcastic and cruel, to cut Sam down to a more manageable size. But he can't.

Sam looks up.

"What's wrong?" he asks. He eyes Dean's new tablet from Mandy; the one with the alternative communication program on it.

Dean fetches it off the table. It has a huge vocabulary—hundreds of preprogrammed words and phrases, plus the few he's managed to pantomime out for Mandy to add. He's not that great with it yet though. It makes his skin crawl, and he hasn't practiced as much as he should. He stares at the screen.

"If you pick a category key—" Sam starts.

Jesus Christ, can't Sam ever shut up? Dean slams the tablet back down on the table, and Sam flinches.

Dean punches him in the face.

"Ow, what the hell, Dean?"

Dean points at Sam's eyes.

"Ah." Sam checks his jaw by moving it side to side with his hand. His lower lip is cut and bleeding sluggishly. He closes the lid of his laptop. "Not that it was any of your business in the first place, but I'm sorry you had to see that."

Dean picks the stupid tablet back up and pokes furiously at the keys.

"We go home now," Dean's tablet says. He points at the ceiling.

"I'm not drinking demon blood, if that's what you're worried about. Ruby told me before she died I never needed it."

Maybe so, but Sam's eyes were black on demon blood and they're _yellow_ now, so that's hardly fucking better. Dean points at the ceiling again.

"I can't."

Dean hits more keys. "Yes you can." He points at Sam's eyes again. "Not okay."

"I don't use my powers unless I have to, Dean. My soul's still human, and I get that I have to be careful; I really do. But I can't afford to look weak, especially not now. It was a show of force." He disappears into the bathroom and Dean plops down on his bed, inadequate tablet in hand. Sam’s raised voice drifts in over the sound of water running in the sink, "In case you didn't notice, your presence here is disruptive, in more ways than one."

He comes back out with a wet washcloth, and dabs at the blood on his lip. Dean makes a scoffing sound.

"What?" Sam complains. "It's the truth. Before you got here, I hadn’t used my powers in months. If you want me to stop, the door's right there."

It's a crappy thing to say, and it should piss Dean off even more. But Sam sounds so much like someone just kicked his favorite puppy that it has the opposite effect instead. The edges of Dean's temper start to curl and burn off, and the Mark hums happily on his arm. Sam doesn't want him to go.

He presses a key.

"Don't be a little bitch about it, Sam," Dean’s tablet says, all in one long, fluent sentence. Having a demon speech therapist is helpful on the vocabulary front.

One corner of Sam's mouth quirks up. He gets an El Sol out of the mini-fridge and hands it to Dean. Gets his own off the table, and sits down on the edge of his bed. Sam doesn't even like El Sol. Why is it the only brand of beer his Hell Hotel carries?

"Listen, I know you think I'm still pissed," he says seriously. "But that's not what this is about."

He looks so earnest. How is Dean ever supposed to stay mad at him when he’s got those soulful anime eyes and that concerned little wrinkle on his forehead?

"I mean, yeah, I was pretty furious at first, Dean. Not gonna lie. And you deserved it too, so stop glaring at me like that. But mostly I was just, I don't know—" He frowns down at his beer. "I was having a hard time and I thought I could do something valuable.

"I didn't finish the Trials. The second time, I mean. I uh, when I—" He points a finger at his neck, where the knife bisected his carotid artery. “It wasn’t like a redo or anything. The spell was just to make sure I ended up downstairs."

He rubs at his hair like he's embarrassed by his admission. Which he damn well should be—though not by the part that he thinks. Dean can't believe he offed himself and he's ashamed he didn't get enough bang for his suicide buck.

"I uh. I killed Crowley for the throne,” Sam explains. “And then I summoned all the demons back to Hell and they had to come. Honestly, most of them were fine with it. I have a legitimate claim through Azazel, and Crowley had nothing.

"I wasn’t being a dick before, when I said I couldn’t leave. If I go, Abaddon will take over and the Gates will all open. They’re only closed because I'm the King, so Hell is...well, me. Which is kind of empty and isolated, I guess. Closed off."

Trapped, he means.

Dean takes a long, long pull of his beer.

The Gates are closed because Sam thinks he deserves to be trapped in Hell, just him and everything evil in the whole damn universe. That's why he jumped in the box with Lucifer, after all.

God, what an idiot.

And what a mess too.

Dean looks around the Hell Sam made by being himself. The decor is mismatched and old. The cheap knock-off art prints that came with the room are overwhelmed by the records of war taped up around them. The beds are made with the military precision of their childhood, and though Dean is the one making them now, they were that way when he got here too.

Dean’s bed is closest to the door.

But where did the door to the Cage come from? Sam’s bed is in front of that one. Who's protecting Sam from the Cage?

“I’m not going back, Dean,” Sam says. “I’m sorry. I am. But other people have been deciding the course of my life since before I was even born, and this is _my_ choice. It’s a constrained one, sure. But Hell is infinitely better now than when Crowley or Lilith ruled it. I’m making something good.”

Dean does not care about Hell.

At all.

He doesn't care whether the Gates are closed or whether the entire Earth is being swarmed by demons rushing through them like shoppers at Walmart on Black Friday. He doesn't even care about Abaddon anymore—although he's coming to realize he might've made her a more personal threat than he meant to—or about the demon blood or anything else that maybe in the past he would’ve gotten worked up about.

He just wants Sam to be alright.

Dean presses a key on his tablet. "Okay."

Sam eyes him suspiciously. "_Okay_, what?"

Dean's eye rolling muscles are getting a workout. He points at Sam and then pantomimes a circle around his head like a crown. Points at himself, rolls up his sleeve and points at the Mark, and then makes a Popeye muscle. Points at the floor.

The Mark purrs happily and floods him with dumb catnip neurotransmitters or whatever.

"_Okay_, you want to stay?"

Dean makes a _meh, sorta_ gesture with his hand. _Want to_ is awful strong wording for what he's feeling. But if Sam isn't going, then neither is Dean.

“_Okay,_ we’re gonna hang out here playing house forever and you’ll just do whatever I say?” Sam asks dryly. “Because if so, that’ll be a first.”

Dean flips him off.

"_Okay_, you think you're Lancelot and this is Avalon?" Sam asks. This time he’s definitely holding back a smile.

Dean nods yes.

Pushes his favorite key. "Don't be a little bitch about it, Sam."


	6. Chapter 6

So now that Dean and Sam are chick flicked up to the gills, Dean goes back to his awesomely talkative real self, right?

“That’s not how it works.” Mandy's cute little button nose wrinkles in professional disapproval. Her meatsuit or soul conception or whatever is a tiny blonde co-ed type with pigtails. Dean wonders sometimes what she did to end up in Hell, but it's probably better he doesn't know.

They're having their twice weekly session at the kitchenette table. Dean is tracing out letters on paper ruled for grade school. Apparently he's doing well, even though he still can't utter word one.

“Some people with language use disorders do recover spontaneously," Mandy says, "but it’s also common to improve slowly through hard work, or to use alternative communication for a lifetime. Your issues include a significant post-traumatic component, so—"

"You think?" Dean's tablet interrupts. He's been practicing, and he's a lot quicker with the soft key punches. Unfortunately, there's no sarcasm button, but he's learning to make do.

"_So_—" Mandy continues, undeterred, "in addition to a speech pathologist, you should really be seeing a therapist too."

Dean points at Mandy. She's a therapist. Kind of. He tries to keep a straight face, but the edges of a grin poke through.

"Not a speech therapist, asshole," she retorts. The girl's got quite a mouth on her. "A therapist, therapist. And the sooner the better; you're the most annoying client I've ever had."

Like Dean might ever. He flips her off.

Her resulting laughter is uncomplicated and bright. She's big on patient autonomy. For a demon, she's kind of a treasure.

* * *

Sam's war is also not conforming to the happily ever after plan. Dean’s been openly attending Sam’s audiences for a couple weeks now, and Sam wasn't wrong about his presence being divisive.

"They think I what now?" Dean asks via tablet.

"That you'd be a more traditional King than Sam, apparently." Bela flips through her stack of reports. "More torturey. Back to the raping and pillaging basics. Also, you're the elder brother, so they say your claim to the throne is stronger."

"That's ridiculous," Beliel or Belphigel, or whatever his name, is argues.

Sam's having a war counsel in the motel room. There are generals and advisors and Secretaries of This and That spread out over every available piece of furniture, eating pizza and drinking beer. In the background, the TV plays the Easter Island episode of _In Search Of_ on mute.

"Dean's only claim would be because he's related to Sam," complains some demon Dean's met once in a context he can't remember. He's built like Dwayne Johnson and is wearing a military beret. "So how could it be stronger than Sam's is? No offense, Dean."

_None taken_ isn't an option on Dean's tablet, so he just shrugs and drinks his beer.

"I didn't say it was credible," Bela snaps. "Do you want to hear the rumors or not?"

"Okay, let's all calm down now." Sam rubs his temples. "Ideas for countermeasures, anyone?"

It's the sixth major issue they've tackled today, there are a metric fuckton of demons in the room, and Sam's air conditioner is broken again. Tempers are getting short.

"The populace eats up the mythic King/Knight connection," Sam's media advisor suggests. "Whenever there's an assassination attempt and Dean gets a kill in, you both show a popularity boost. Maybe he could be a little more stabby? Torture some alleged perpetrators before he offs them?"

"Have him declare fealty," Bela says. "Make a ceremony of it; the old fashioned way, with all the bells and whistles." She eyes Dean slyly. "Have him get on his knees and kiss your ring. The traditionalists will love it."

Dean's stomach does an inappropriate little flip.

"I don't even have a ring," Sam says dryly. "And also, I'm a reformer. Dean's his own person. No way."

"Whatever you say," Bela replies. She picks a piece of sausage off her pizza and pops it in her mouth. "But I'm sure Dean wouldn't mind. It's just a harmless bit of theater. Isn't that right, Dean?"

"Not going to happen," Sam says. "Next suggestion."

But the tips of his ears turn pink.

* * *

Here's the thing. Dean is already washing and folding Sam's laundry, so it's not a big deal if he wants to polish Sam's Fed shoes as well. Sam should look his best when he meets with his citizens, is all Dean's saying. Or would be saying if he had _citizen_ and _Fed_ on his tablet, anyway.

Now that he's allowed off hotel property, he drives one of the beaters to a dollar store and picks up a polish kit, and while Sam's working at his laptop one evening and the buzz of cicadas is thick outside in the summer air, he gets out Sam's dress shoes and gives them a rubdown.

Mostly he concentrates on the leather; the feel of it under his hands, and the meditative stillness of repeating the same motions over and over to build the shine. A little, he notices the beating of his heart, and the warm thrum of the Mark in his blood, satisfied with Dean's service to his King.

But if he glances up and Sam is watching him with hooded eyes, well, that's hardly a reason to stop.

He still keeps to his other tasks too. Boredom's not his motive anymore, now that he attends all Sam's strategy meetings, goes with Sam on site inspections and troop visits, and stands behind Sam's ridiculous armchair throne in his blood red overshirt with the sleeves rolled up to show the Mark of Cain. He finds the time though, because, quite simply, he enjoys it and always has.

The fifth day Dean is touching up Sam's shoes, he looks up from applying polish, and Sam isn't watching. Dean looks up a bit later, and Sam's eyes are still studiously engaged with whatever he's doing at his computer.

Which is, of course, completely fine. Dean's not doing it for Sam's attention, and besides, Sam is often busy, the sound of his fingers on the keyboard a pleasant backdrop to Dean's work.

Except Sam is not typing. His hands are in his lap, and have been for too long to be credibly surfing, let alone anything more serious. He's still as stone while Dean takes in the flush on his cheeks, and the fit of his button down shirt across his chest. One of his feet is rested outside the confines of the table legs. He’s wearing black dress socks, and his toes are pointed at Dean.

Dean finishes up with Sam's shoes. He takes his time; makes sure the shine is perfect.

Sam hasn't moved.

Dean’s heartbeat is loud in his ears. His body feels light, and the world outside it is tranquil and far away. He's cross-legged on the carpet with Sam's shoe in his lap. The memory of the day he arrived in Hell is so strong he can almost feel the floor against his shins.

Surely if Sam's encouraging this, it isn't wrong.

He gathers up the horsehair brush and the tin of polish and the buffing rag and puts them away. He brings Sam's shoes over and kneels in front of his brother.

Sam offers his foot in silence. Dean slips his shoe on for him and laces it up, like Sam is a child or Dean is a manservant in a stuffy British period piece. Sam scoots his chair back from the table, and Dean puts his other shoe on him too.

Sam swallows hard and clears his throat. "My tie?"

Dean gets up and retrieves a red and white striped tie from the closet. It’s one of Sam's favorites, the one he wears when they’re meeting some pompous anthropology professor or rich chick on a case and he wants to make a good impression. Sam bends his neck, and Dean reaches the tie around behind his head, gets it situated neatly under his collar, and ties a half-Windsor knot in front.

He takes Sam's suit jacket off its hanger without being asked, and helps Sam on with it, adjusts the shoulders and sleeves. Dean's face is hot, and he couldn't force himself to look Sam in the eye if his life depended on it. He's hard inside his jeans.

"Thank you," Sam says gravely.

They walk down the hall to one of the guest rooms, where Sam has a meeting with a representative of Hell’s small contingent of still-human souls. Dean stands behind Sam in a daze. His participation isn't required. He's none too sure he'd be capable if it was.

They go back to their room and hit the sack. Dean expects to toss and turn, but he sleeps like a baby.

No one mentions the... whatever that was. Weird servant role-play.

They don’t discuss it the next day or the day after that. Dean jerks off to it in the shower though. He wakes up in the mornings and Sam has coffee and jelly doughnuts waiting for him, and it’s so banal and ordinary that without really thinking exactly, he decides.

His tablet doesn’t have the right vocabulary, so he punches in the half it can handle: “I want—“

Sam looks up from his morning internet reading. His hair is floofy and curled up wrong at the ends on one side. There’s powdered sugar left over from his breakfast doughnut at the corner of his mouth. Dean takes Sam’s left hand off the laptop keyboard and kisses his bare ring finger.

Sam studies him quietly for a moment before he replies. Dean’s cheeks are hot, but the manliest dude in the universe couldn’t get through something this embarrassing without blushing, so Dean guesses it's fine.

“You’re sure?” Sam asks.

Dean nods.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Okay.”

* * *

So that’s how Dean ends up on his knees in front of Sam for the third time in a matter of months.

It's not as cringey as he'd feared.

Sam stood firm against the combined forces of his media advisor and Bela, and refused to wear anything more traditional than his Fed suit—which is a damn good thing, because Dean doubts he'd be able to keep from laughing if Sam had on a crown of bones and a creepy-ass robe dyed in the blood of virgins or whatever. They insisted harder on the ring, and Sam caved and dug one up somewhere. But although Dean will never admit to it, he's secretly kind of glad.

Sam still holds his usual audience first, and man is the ballroom_ packed_. But far from ramping up Dean's pre-dog-and-pony jitters, like he'd thought it would, the sheer tedium of most of the petitioners' issues zones him into calmness. By the time Sam calls him forward from behind the armchair, he's half lost track of time and place, and besides, taking a vow of fealty to your brother can't be any stupider than complaining to the King that your daughter's demon boyfriend broke your coffee pot with his mind and is refusing to replace it.

Dean comes around in front of Sam, and gets down on his knees like the ceremony requires. Sam stands and makes important-sounding pronouncements in Latin, and Dean nods at expected intervals, and it's all pretty uneventful, except for the part where Dean's eyes are about two inches from Sam's crotch. Dean's throat is suddenly parched, and he definitely wasn't planning on popping a boner in front of a ballroom full of demons, although at least he's facing away from them.

Dean swears to be loyal to Sam, and be the enemy of his enemies, and go to war for him, and there's something about lands in there that isn't relevant, and he gives up his nonexistent pursuit of the throne for as long as Sam lives. None of it's much of a stretch, and he wishes Sam would hurry it up a bit, because the stage is uncarpeted and his knees are starting to hurt. He also vows to be_ 'faithful and true'_ and do _'only what pleases'_ Sam, and _'never what doesn't'_. That seems like a bit much, but it also makes his dick throb, so whatever.

And then Sam holds out his hand, and Dean takes it in his own and presses his lips to the hereditary signet ring of the King of Hell. The ring is gold and engraved with a dragon--for Lucifer, because of course it is--and for a moment, Dean almost feels sick.

But then he looks up at Sam through his lashes, and Sam is watching him intently. Sam's eyes are hooded and dark, and his lips are slightly parted, and Dean's nausea is replaced by a rush of lightheadedness.

What the heck, might as well. He opens his mouth around the signet and licks at the base of Sam's finger, draws his tongue along the web between his ring finger and his pinkie. Sam takes a sharp breath in, and when Dean pulls away, Sam's Fed pants are tight in the front.

Dean looks demurely at the plywood stage floor while Sam says a few more things and kisses him on the crown of his head, and then it's over. He gets his feet under him and retreats behind Sam's throne. The Mark purrs like an enormous cat that lapped up a gallon of cream.

Sam and Bela compare notes while the packed house files slowly out the back. Sam takes off his jacket and throws it over the back of Bela's chair. He rolls up his sleeves and bends to check a file on her desk. His posture shows off the breadth of his shoulders and the muscular lines of his glutes and thighs, and the ballroom lights must be up too bright and the temperature set too high, because Dean is burning inside. Dean's knees ache, not entirely unpleasantly, from his time on the floor. His dick is so hard it hurts.

When the last of the crowd is gone, Bela says, "Well, I'd love to stay and help you two with whatever very important business is left for the evening, but I'm afraid I have a prior engagement. Do be a dear and take care of everything, won't you Dean?"

She makes a little_ ta-ta_ wave, and Dean is too nonplussed to flip her off before the door is slamming shut behind her.

Sam clears his throat. "I guess it's, uh—time to get back to the room?"

Yeah. Maybe.

But Dean did kinda promise—albeit in slightly different wording—to_ 'take care of everything'._ And he thinks maybe not strictly _everything_ has been taken care of just yet.

When Sam rolled up his sleeves, for example, he neglected to loosen his tie.

So Dean steps into Sam's space, and does it for him. The silk knot loosens easily, and Sam's adam's apple bobs under Dean's fingertips.

"Dean," Sam says tentatively, "are you—"

Yes, Dean is sure.

He puts a finger to Sam's lips. Sam shuts up.

He pushes flat-palmed against Sam's chest, and Sam takes a step back. He does it again and Sam steps back again. He leaves the pressure of his hand there and Sam's heart speeds up against his palm as they walk the few more steps together until Sam's backed up against the wall.

Sam's dress shirt might be a bit tight—the button between his pecs seems a little strained. Dean adjusts the lay of the fabric, and he might run his fingers across Sam's nipples a couple times in the process, but these things happen.

Dean accidentally-on-purpose pinches a nipple, and Sam's breath hisses between his teeth.

"Dean," he says, just that, and his cracked open voice makes Dean want to bend him over Bela's desk like he was before, but farther. Or maybe lay down on it himself with his legs spread wide.

Sam reaches for him, but this is Dean's job. He promised. He bats Sam's hands away, and Sam groans and lays his palms flat against the wall behind him instead.

Sam's slacks are thoroughly tented now—which surely can't be comfortable—so Dean abandons Sam's shirt and gets to the more urgent problem instead. He unbuckles Sam's belt and unzips Sam's pants.

And that's where his plan goes slightly awry. Because he was gonna stroke Sam softly through his underwear, maybe bring Sam's cock out through his fly and give him a leisurely blow job, the dignified kind that a gentleman of the—

Ah, fuck it. He snags a handful of pants and underwear on both sides and yanks it all down Sam's thighs. Sam's cock springs free, and okay, maybe it really _was_ as urgent as Dean was pretending, because how does he keep all that in his pants?

Dean's really gonna have to stop kneeling so much—his shins are taking a beating. He'll get right on that tomorrow. For tonight though, he gets back on his knees again not two feet from where he was last time, grabs Sam's ass to pull him close, and buries his face in Sam's groin. He nuzzles Sam's balls and at the join of his thigh, breathes in the sharp scent of Sam's sweat.

God. It's_ Sam_. Dean never thought—

He's gonna have _Sam_ in his mouth, down his throat. Sam's cock is knocking against his cheek. Sam is moaning above him.

He licks a stripe up the underside of Sam's dick, tongues at the frenulum to watch Sam's cock jump, and over the slit to taste his precome. He takes the head in his mouth, and then some of the shaft, suckles and licks until Sam's hips start to rock, and then takes him in deeper.

San's cock bumps against the back of throat, and he gags and pulls off a little; bobs his head to bring Sam in again, takes a deep breath, swallows, and feeds Sam into his throat.

Sam has stopped rocking, and is standing so stock still now his thighs are shaking. His head is thrown back, and his hands are scrabbling to grab onto the wall, and he's saying_ Dean, Dean, oh God, Jesus fuck, **Dean**,_ like he's as shocked and amazed by this entire turn of events as Dean is.

His cock is too monster huge and the position is too terrible to get all of him down Dean's throat the first time, but Dean goes to town on him, bobbing and working him in and out of his mouth and bumping him off the back of his throat and past his gag reflex, until his nose is buried in Sam's pubes, just where he wants it. Spit is leaking down Dean's chin and his eyes are tearing so hard he's basically crying, and he's trying to breath through his nose, but Sam's too big to get much air past.

Sam's got one hand in Dean's hair now, but oh so lightly, and his hips aren't moving an inch, and Dean can tell he's worried he's gonna hurt him, which is the stupidest fucking thing ever considering the circumstances. But to be fair, Sam probably isn't considering much of anything right now. So Dean puts his hand over Sam's in his hair and squeezes, and then gets a good grip on both of his ass cheeks again and rocks Sam's hips for him until Sam gets with the program and starts fucking Dean's face in earnest.

And then Dean can just relax. He chokes when Sam pumps fast and hard, and doesn't when he goes a little slower. He buzzes on hypoxia when Sam pushes into his throat, and breathes when Sam pulls him off. He's holding onto Sam's ass cheeks for dear life, and while he could probably let go if Sam told him to, he can't summon up the will to bother with it himself. He's still fully dressed and his cock was so hard earlier it hurt, but now it's equally hard and it feels amazing. Because _everything_ feels amazing.

"Dean, oh god—" Sam keens, and then he breaks off and drags Dean's face in as close to his body as it will go. Dean's lips and nose are buried in his pubic hair, and Sam shudders and his cock pulses and he comes down Dean's throat.

He keeps Dean there through the aftershocks while Dean flies on endorphins and not enough oxygen and the ecstatic approval of the Mark of Cain, and then he drags Dean off and they both collapse in a pile on the floor.

Dean closes his eyes and drifts. Sam's hands are on his belt buckle and he's gonna tell Sam it's fine, the world is perfect and he needn't bother, but then he remembers he can't talk.

So then he's gonna bat Sam's hands off instead and hope he figures out the rest of the message himself, but that seems like an awful lot of work.

So in the end, he just lies there and lets Sam give him a hand job. He's been hard so long and he's flying so close to the edge that it takes about five strokes total and is still the most intense orgasm of his life.

Or maybe it's just the best because Sam's the one who gave it to him.

He thinks it's not supposed to work that way. Like, physiologically. But then again, they're dead and they don't have bodies, so whatever.

And then he thinks it's not supposed to work that way psychologically either. Wasn't he supposed to be doing this for Sam? Sam's the King and Dean's the servant and they'll have to talk about role division later.

...After he gets Mandy to program all the sex words into his tablet.

By then it'll probably be too late. Sam will be insisting on pleasuring Dean in a strict fifty-fifty split, or researching how to please your demonic Mark-bearer on the internet, or wanting to have sharing-and-caring outdoor lovemaking under the stars he somehow created with the power of his brain.

Actually, it's probably too late already. Sam's a reformer, after all.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they all (after-)lived happily ever er... after. 
> 
> That's the end of the story, although I love the universe so much I might write more in it later, if I don't get too distracted first. I hope you enjoyed reading. 
> 
> There's one more "chapter" to this fic, but it's the wonderful BlindSwandive's nsfw illustration of the blowjob scene. It's so gorgeous and hot that I wanted to include it in the story, but also, I know not all readers are comfortable with nsfw art, so this way y'all have the option to continue on for the art, or stop here if you'd prefer not to see it. 
> 
> I'll also add some end notes there once I've had a couple days to decompress, since in general in my fics I think it's easy to tell what's realistic and what isn't, whereas in this fic I've included a couple fairly real-seeming components that contain artistic license. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to hit me up. :)


	7. Chapter 7




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